D&D 5E Advice for one-shots

[Blue]

My normal DMing style is long, sprawling campaigns. I throw in foreshadowing before I know what it's actually referring to, adapt long term campaign plots towards what the players show the most interest in, run character arcs where everyone has not just spotlight but times to resolve backstory and grow as characters. I don't mind spending a session with heavy RP around the campfire with no plot advancement, combat or anything else happening. I write big mythic elements into my settings for the characters to discover, and make it relevant. And I bring small NPCs to life, and at times make them relevant as well. I homebrew everything and invite my players into helping define it, especially the parts impacting their characters.

I suck at running one shots or even episodic sessions.

I just never developed these DMing muscles. Sure, I can run a workmanlike set of encounters that hang together with some sort of theme, but that's my weakest. And I don't have a good control over pacing to get a good start, middle and end in a set block of time. (Something which would definitely help my normal DMing as well, so I could end on more climaxes and cliffhangers.)

I've wanted to get better at doing one shots to improve the rest of my game, but now I've got more incentive. I've had several teen children of my players and friends who have asked me to teach them D&D.

With limited schedules and not likely much chance for follow-up games with the same crew. I really feel like I need to hook them from session one (no chance for a session zero), and each time provide a complete play experience - a complete adventure.

And not to put too fine of a point on it, that's all three pillars of D&D. Primarily combat scenarios won't hold the attention of several of them.

I've been pushing this off for months. I'm not worried about the ages - these are all bright and creative individuals and I've played strategy board games with most of them. But I'm anxious about being able to provide complete one-shots in an afternoon with a good number of scenes and different types of activities and am looking for your advice about running one-shots.

Lay on, Macduff!

 

[LordEntrails]

Google the following;
- five room dungeon
- three clue rule

A one-shot is not going to be epic. NPC's are going to be stereotypical.

All that's fine. So here's what I would suggest, plan on a four hour session with 2 combats and 1 non-combat encounter. If they are experienced role-players you could add one more encounter of either type, but don't start there.

The adventure is not going to be sandbox. It needs a clear catch and plot with a straightforward solution (even if it requires puzzling things out). Don't worry about elaborate backstories, in fact, don't allow them.

Why is the party all there and why are they working together? Don't let the players decide. Tell them, and it should be simple and straight-forward. ("You all grew up together." "You all answered a bard's call and have been hired by an old man to...")

Subtle no. Plots, enemies, objectives should all be straightforward and clear. Make the bad guys personable. Let the players do stupid heroic things and succeed. Let them have fun and be the heroes.

 

[Hawk Diesel]

I suggest think of a problem to solve, or even ask the players what kind of problem to solve. Think of what the beginning and end looks like (perhaps even plan what success looks like versus failure), and let the players figure out how to go from point A to point B. In my experience, one shots require a lot more improve and I tend to use my story dice a lot. Finally, is the purpose of the one-shot about fighting and combat, or role play and solving challenges. Depending on the length of the session (my one shots typically finish in under 3 hours), you really have limited time on the number of challenges you can fit in.

Typically, I also worry a bit less about the rules for one-shots, but that's because

1) my style is to value narrative over mechanics

2) structured combat (of "appropriate" CR against party power level) that is guided more by rules than narrative can drag out, reducing time for the story of the one-shot

For me, I try to have combat be cinematic and quick. Combats that are not a boss fight should not last more than two rounds. And I don't use the typical stat blocks in the MM. I describe the creatures and their tactics, give myself a rough modifier for enemy attacks, AC, Saves, and damage that I write down literally the second combat ends (and only to remain consistent. Sometimes I just roll a d20 with no modifiers), and set to work.

In my experience, the best one-shots have been rules light. Especially because you are probably running it with pre-generated characters or making them quick and dirty prior to the session. If you do this, especially higher than level 1, players don't generally have enough time to be comfortable or familiar enough with their characters strengths, weaknesses, abilities, or powers. The higher the level, the more mechanics are involved, the more the game slows, and the more difficult the one-shot is to finish. One-shots with characters higher than level one, or ones more focused on combat are different. For those, they typically feel more like a gladiatorial match. You'll probably have one powerful big bad that you'll fight, and that will really be the majority of the one-shot. Which is fine if you and your players are more about the combat and mechanics, but those slug matches take a good amount of time. Especially since you likely need to pump up the CR of the creature since the classes are designed for multiple fights over an adventuring day.

I'm not sure how coherent this is, but hopefully there's at least one or two kernels in there that are helpful.

 

[Rod Staffwand]

I'd say:

1. Jump right in. Start the adventure in media res. Start with a clear goal for the PCs with clear obstacles and baddies. Rescue an NPC from a band of goblins in arduous terrain. Hunt down a dangerous beast. Flee from an orc horde. Find a way through a mysterious forest. Explore a ruined castle.

2. For introductory adventures I favor having more real-world challenges (with rules and parameters understandable to the players) with just a sprinkling of magic and the supernatural. If you place a locked door in front of a group of new players, most will intuit they can break it down, pick the lock, find the key or find another way forward. Don't give them solutions, let them figure out their own. To me, that's the most addictive part of gaming--letting the players control their own destiny. Doors. Walls. Chasms. Simple Puzzles. Missing pieces to be found. The challenges needn't be clever. The purpose is to teach the players the resolution systems of the game and force them to make choices.

3. For combats, I favor a couple of easy combats and a tougher 'boss battle'. Some combats should be avoidable to clever parties and there should be opportunities for such players to gain advantage (such as surprise or choice of terrain). I also like to include a tougher monster somewhere in there for the PCs to (hopefully) avoid.

4. There should be at least one interaction wherein the PCs need to deal with an NPC for something they need. This should be resolved with roleplaying more so than social skills. If one player is doing all the talking, have the NPC(s) address the other PCs to give them a chance to express themselves.

5. Have them find magic items. Finding cool magic items is one of the best things about playing D&D.

6. For one-shots, especially introductory ones, there's no time for elaborate backstories and complex NPCs. The kingdom of Generica is either a Good Kingdom, benevolent and wise, or an Evil Kingdom, cruel and despotic. If something takes more than a couple of sentences to describe, it's too complex. You don't need to follow the "Show, Don't Tell" rule for one-shots. You don't need to backup your descriptions of things with tons of detail.

7. If the players are taking too long deciding what to do, you can give them an honest appraisal of the situation and some of their options. Some players tend to overthink everything. This is usually because they don't have enough information and are unsure of how to get it or even to ask for it. Don't give them answers, give them possibilities and probabilities. At the same time, putting a player on the spot by asking them to react to something (say a pit slowly opening up underneath them, an NPC approaching them, or a feeling a unexpected draft) helps keep everyone active.

8. BTW, I don't favor the 5-room dungeon concept. I feel it's way too linear with too little exploration and self-determination by the players. It has its place, but not as an introduction (since it teaches new players to just follow a spoon fed path with set story beats) and not as a standard model for an adventure (wherein it gets repetitive).

 

[77IM]

Great replies so far! Since you sound like an experienced DM, I'll try to approach this from the angle of how 1-shots (or, 2- or 3- shots, in case you run over time) differ from long campaign play.

1. Use pregens. Give the pregens strong hooks into the story and a bit of role-playing advice. Lean heavily on stereotypes for this. Personally, I'd emphasize role-playing over mechanics when describing the pregens to the players. E.g., instead of going on about the difference between wizard spellcasting and warlock spellcasting, make the wizard an wizened, inscrutable gnome, and the warlock a flashy young half-elf hotshot. For an experienced group, you can be more flexible about this; maybe build some options into the one-shots, or present each one with several role-playing suggestions.

2. Clear goals. Like, bluntly obvious. The party should never be debating what to do, only how to do it. The easiest way is to have a patron send them on an important mission. The second easiest way is to give each pregen their own reason to follow the goal. The third easiest is for you to state the goal and ask the players why each character is following it, but this works better with an experienced group.

3. Fluid obstacles. Prepare lots of encounters, NPCs, and puzzles that MIGHT sit between the PCs and victory... but don't decide what's really there until you need to. This gives you lots of flexibility in pacing the session. If the PCs breeze through a mystery, then they get jumped by a combat encounter. If the combat encounter slogs on, then cut out the chase scene.

The biggest mistake I've made (repeatedly!) when planning one-shots is to build a linear adventure. The reasoning is sound: remove decision-making by putting the party on rails, and things will speed along! The problem with a linear sequence of encounters is that a) decision-making is fun and b) it makes it harder for the DM to adjust the pace on-the-fly.

This is a variation of the classic GM advice, "Do lots of preparation but zero planning." Paradoxically, preparation makes it easier to improv. The downside is that you'll inevitably prep encounters that never see the light of day. Ideally you can steal those for use in later sessions.

4. Watch the clock. I know DMs who put a phone alarm to vibrate periodically through the session as a gentle reminder to keep things moving. If you're used to long-form campaigning, then you know how games can stall in various ways (some fun, some not). This can kill a one-shot. There are numerous techniques to get the game moving again, but for me, the hardest part is just being aware of how much time is passing.

5. Leave hooks for the next session! Hopefully, the PCs will be victorious, and end the session with a feeling of accomplishment. But, sprinkle in some unanswered questions, mysterious keys, treasure maps, enemies that get away... these leave players feeling like they accomplished something that is part of a larger world; that they accomplished something that might matter even after the curtain drops. And of course, it hopefully leaves them thirsting for more!

 

[aco175]

Not sure if you can find any of the Dungeon adventures called Challenge of the Champions from 20 years ago. Each of them had great puzzles and diagrams that can be easily taken and made into one of your obstacles.

I would also take a couple types of monsters for your fight encounters. Say you have goblins outside the and in the entrance of the dungeon. Next is a puzzle encounter room where the goblins do not cross. After that, the monsters turn to skeletons with a wight leader in the last rooms. It gives the players exposure to a couple types of monsters and makes the monsters decidedly evil and not town guards or something where they may not want to fight.

All the rest is great advise as well and congrats on getting to DM a new group of teens like this. I think it would be great to have a brand new group and not keep adding one to the regular group. Hopefully a few will want to keep playing.

 

[redrick]

I struggle with the same thing, even though I often find myself running one-shots. So I am looking forward to the replies here.

For myself, I have found:
1. Err on the side of obvious. Players only have a little time to "figure it out" so it's ok to use hit-you-over-the-head clues that the players can quickly decipher.
2. It's ok to not finish the adventure sometimes. Sometimes it works to "skip to the end," sometimes it works to bail out to an alternative climax that doesn't involve the original goals (like two of your characters die and the other two run away!), and sometimes it works to just put the dice down and say, "That's all we have time for today."

Honestly, about half of the one-shot adventures I run don't get to the intended climax. Things can take a while to get started, unexpected tangents can take more time than expected, or, as a DM, I can just lose track of time. (I need to get myself a little desk clock to keep behind the screen, as 77IM suggests.) Sometimes it works to short-circuit the adventure and bring the quest goal closer to the players (removing sections of a dungeon, throwing more clues in front of the players, moving an NPC to a confrontation, etc.) Sometimes, that feels really forced, though usually this is because I prep'ed an adventure that was too ambitious for the time allotted. Sometimes, if play has moved too much from the originally intended event, some other sort of climactic confrontation can happen. Hopefully something that somehow changes the world the PCs were in, so you can sit back and say, "well, now things are a little different in the town of Red Tree."

Anyway, I'm looking forward to reading more!

 

[iserith]

Figure out how long the session will be in real time. Real time management is key in a one-shot and I have run a LOT of one-shots.

Snip 30 minutes out for character intro and exposition. Make sure each character knows and trusts the other and has a reason to pursue the adventure objective.

Start big. End big. Budget about 2 hours for these two scenes, whatever they are. So that's 2.5 hours right there. Everything in the middle should be set up such that you can take it out if you need to and/or the players can choose to skip it. Plenty of my adventures have parts that are completely unexplored by the players and that's okay. The story is what they did, not some plot I cooked up beforehand.

I generally recommend adventure locations to explore rather than plot-based adventures, though event-based adventures set in an adventure location to explore works best since you can set an event to be the big ending. The dungeon that's about to be overrun by hobgoblins or whatever, for example. When you know time is running out for the session, you can just trigger the event in the final hour.

Think about whether you want the adventure to be replayable - something you can use with other groups or maybe even with some of the same players if they want to take it on again and set it up so things can change based on certain parameters. Random charts are good for this.

Otherwise, it's not very hard. I recommend jumping into some one-shots on Roll20 to get a feel for things. Often you'll discover what not to do, but at least that's useful information!

 

[Blue]

Thanks [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]. This is full of specific, actionable items. This is the type of advice that is exactly what I was looking for.

 

[Blue]

The adventure is not going to be sandbox. It needs a clear catch and plot with a straightforward solution (even if it requires puzzling things out). Don't worry about elaborate backstories, in fact, don't allow them.

Why is the party all there and why are they working together? Don't let the players decide. Tell them, and it should be simple and straight-forward. ("You all grew up together." "You all answered a bard's call and have been hired by an old man to...")

Subtle no. Plots, enemies, objectives should all be straightforward and clear. Make the bad guys personable. Let the players do stupid heroic things and succeed. Let them have fun and be the heroes.

These are good points. Keep it simple, keep it straightforward, and for their first time give them information and mechanics upfront instead of taking time out of the session to develop it. (Like pre-gen characters, knowing/trusting each other, and "the quest")

All that's fine. So here's what I would suggest, plan on a four hour session with 2 combats and 1 non-combat encounter. If they are experienced role-players you could add one more encounter of either type, but don't start there.

These are RPG newbies, and I'd really like to get them involved in at least one substantial RP scene to give them a taste for that and playing in character, and at least one scene that leverages the system and mechanics but showcases something different than combat.

I like the idea of two combats - one to get their feet wet and develop a feel for the mechanics and rhythm of it and then a harder one later(/ending) to give them the thrill of overcoming a real challenge.

I just worry about how to fit all that in on a short time budget.

Google the following;
- five room dungeon
- three clue rule

Well familiar with these tools and use both. I've been DMing close to 3 decades - it's just that the shortest campaign I've run in the past two is my current at four years, and that's just because it's still going.